You want the best as a leader in your career and business. You invest in your education and personal growth, you attend the best networking events, and you insure that you are dressing for success. But are you checking your emotions and making sure that you are setting yourself up for success through them?
Everything you want to create in your life from a happy personal life to a thriving career is based on how you set up and manage your emotions. Imagine a ladder: the top rung of the ladder is labeled “love, joy, happiness”, the middle rung is “overwhelm” and the lowest rung is “despair, powerlessness, depression”. Each rung in between is labeled with an emotion. The draining and lower energy emotions such as worry, blame, revenge, jealousy and insecurity are on the lower half. Climbing up the ladder reveals different emotional energies like doubt, frustration, hopefulness and positive expectations. Most people hang around the area of the ladder named contentment or boredom – and not much creating can happen here.
The best emotions for creating happiness and fulfillment as a leader are found at the top of the ladder. Your goal is to identify what rung your emotion is stuck on and shift your energy enough to take that step to the next emotional level. Visualize moving up the ladder of success – it does get easier with each step.
How do you climb that ladder and switch your emotions when you are stuck in feelings like discouragement, doubt and worry? Here are some of my favorite techniques for shifting your energy into an emotion that will bring you more creativity.
Change your thoughts
You cannot have a bad thought at the same time you are having a good thought. Plus positive emotions will follow good thoughts and actions to make your goals come true will become easier to achieve. When you realize you are having thoughts of being a failure (discouragement), take a deep breath and tell yourself “I am creative and resourceful and accept all help to achieve success.” Breathe in this new thought and say it often. You may even want to write it out as an affirmation. Your emotions will change from discouragement to hopefulness. Up the ladder you go.
Breathe and move
When faced with feelings of overwhelm and of being stuck, you can shift your energy by simply breathing and then moving. The act of deep breathing gets your blood flowing and energizes your body and senses. When you stand up to change your position and your location, it also energizes your body and creates a different perspective for you. These two activities will actually push the de-energizing emotion away, allowing higher energies to move in. Overwhelm turns into positive expectations and action. This technique works well with anger also. When you’re angry, finding something to “do” such as consciously breathing and moving will help shift the anger into a more productive feeling.
Read something inspiring
If you experience insomnia caused by thoughts of worry and doubt, get up and read something inspiring and uplifting. Personal growth and spiritual books are great as are energizing novels. These readings help you regain your focus on something positive and meaningful. Enhance the effect with soothing music and your worry will transform into joy and happy contentment.
Be grateful
When you realize you feel like a victim, blaming others for your situation, stop and put your focus on your life and what you are grateful for – no matter how small. Replace thoughts like “Everything is his fault; if he appreciated me I could be more productive and happier” with “I love my life, I am so grateful to have work where I can express my creativity.” Focusing on something to be grateful for creates more things in your life to be grateful for. Putting your attention on the good things in your life is empowering and shifts your emotions to ones with more creativity.
Being a great leader is being responsible….
When you realize that you are responsible to yourself and that you can manage your emotional energies, then you can create that fabulous success you are craving! You are responsible for assessing where your emotions and feelings are stuck and for taking the consistent action to shift them.
To your big success!
